Torture cry at Speaker door

- CRPF assaults us during rebel ops, cries Bhimbandh

GAUTAM SARKAR IN JAMUI

Over 150 women, mostly tribals, from villages in the Bhimbandh forest cover, walked to the Jamui circuit house along with their children to narrate their tales of misery before Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary yesterday.

The women narrated to Chaudhary how the CRPF personnel frequently assaulted them on the pretext of anti-Naxalite operations. The Speaker expressed serious concern over the matter and assured the villagers of appropriate preventive measures. “Violence would not be tolerated and those who instigating violence would not be spared,” he said.

“CRPF personnel enter our houses in the absence of male family members. They accuse us to be supporters of partymen (read Naxalites) and ransack our houses. If some of us dare to oppose them, they assault us or even molest us,” Minty Koda of Sonarba hamlet told Chaudhary.

Another villager, Sonelal Koda, while submitting a written application from the women’s group to the Speaker, narrated his bitter experience with the CRPF to Chaudhary in another written complaint. Koda, a daily wager in the forest department, alleged that he was nabbed by the CRPF in the first week of June for playing a suspected role in the Maoist ambush in the Bhimbandh forest cover on April 10, 2014, the polling day in which two CRPF personnel lost their lives. “After beating me up mercilessly, they tied my legs and hung me upside down. A deputy commandant put his revolver close to my ear and forced me to confess my involvement in the case. I was scared and obeyed his command,” Koda told Chaudhary. Thereafter, Koda was admitted to Jamui Sadar hospital and was released only last week.

When contacted, the company commandant of the CRPF’s 131st battalion, P. Pradip Kumar, vehemently denied the allegations levelled by the village women and Sonelal Koda. “The Maoists had beaten Koda and assaulted the village women, not the CRPF personnel. The rebels even compelled them to blame the CRPF as a part of a well-planned conspiracy to defame us,” said the commandant.

“The CRPF camp has managed to destroy the erstwhile forest corridors of the rebels, which connected the most inaccessible parts of Munger, Jamui and Lakhisarai through Bhimbandh, known as a safe haven for rebels. Hence, we have uprooted the epicentre of the rebels and to counter that, they have started such propaganda against us,” reasoned the commandant.